Annurev-Environ-The Politics of Climate ChangeAdaptation

EG43CH13_Prakash ARI 14 September 2018 15:50
Annual Review of Environment and Resources
The Politics of Climate Change

Adaptation
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Nives Dolšak1 and Aseem Prakash2

Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 2018.43:317-341. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org
1
School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, University of Washington, Seattle,
Washington 98195, USA; email: nives@uw.edu
2
Department of Political Science & Center for Environmental Politics, University of
Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA; email: aseem@uw.edu
Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 2018. 43:317–41 Keywords

First published as a Review in Advance on climate, adaptation, maladaptation, politics, disaster management
May 31, 2018
The Annual Review of Environment and Resources is Abstract

online at environ.annualreviews.org
Climate action has two pillars: mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation faces
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ- collective action issues because its costs are focused on specific locations/
102017-025739
actors but benefits are global and nonexcludable. Adaptation, in contrast,
Copyright c 2018 by Annual Reviews. creates local benefits, and therefore should face fewer collective action issues.
All rights reserved
However, governance units vary in the types of adaptation policies they
adopt. To explain this variation, we suggest conceptualizing adaptation-as-
politics because adaptation speaks to the issues of power, conflicting policy
preferences, resource allocation, and administrative tensions. In examining
who develops and implements adaptation, we explore whether adaptation
is the old wine of disaster management in the new bottle of climate policy,
and the tensions between national and local policy making. In exploring what
adaptation policies are adopted, we discuss maladaptation and the distinction
between hard and soft infrastructure. Finally, we examine why politicians
favor visible, hard adaptation over soft adaptation, and how international
influences shape local policy.
317
Contents
1. INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
2. WHO DEVELOPS ADAPTATION POLICIES? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
2.1. Adaptation, Old and New . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
2.2. Tension Between National and Local Adaptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
3. TYPES OF ADAPTATION POLICIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
3.1. Soft Infrastructure and Adaptation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
3.2. Critiques of Adaptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
4. WHY SPECIFIC TYPES OF ADAPTATION POLICIES EMERGE . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
4.1. Policy Visibility and Political Choices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
4.2. International Influences on Local Adaptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331

5. CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
1. INTRODUCTION
Climate change is among the most visible policy challenges facing the world (1). There appears to
be a consensus among political, policy, and business elites for urgent climate action. Every year, the
World Economic Forum (2) publishes the Global Risks Report ahead of its annual summit in Davos,
Switzerland, identifying the “top 5 global risks in terms of impact.” The 2016 report placed “failure
of climate change mitigation and adaptation” as the top risk. In the 2017 report, three of the top five
risks are related to climate change: “extreme weather events” (second), “major natural disasters”
(fourth), and “failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation” (fifth). The World Bank (http://
www.worldbank.org/en/topic/climatechange) notes the adverse implications of climate change
for global poverty and also identifies development opportunities offered by climate action.
The United Nations (http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/climate-change-2/) lists
climate action (“Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”) among the 17
sustainable development goals.
Climate action has two pillars, mitigation and adaptation, both posing different sorts of policy
challenges. Mitigation requires addressing the tragedy of the global commons (3). This is because
the ability of the global atmosphere to absorb greenhouse gas emissions is a rival common pool
resource (4). Given the open access nature of the atmosphere, it is difficult to exclude individual
actors from using it as an emission sink. Various multilateral treaties, starting with the 1992 United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), have attempted to transform
the global atmosphere from an open access resource to a common pool regime. The strategy is to
create excludability by assigning national level emissions targets, which countries are expected to
translate into their domestic policies.1 But in doing so, countries face a political challenge: The
costs of reducing these emissions tend to be local and concentrated on specific actors/locations,2 but
1
Prior to the 2016 Paris Agreement, Annex I countries were subject to mandatory pollution reduction targets, whereas non-
Annex I countries were not. Subsequent to the Paris Agreement, all countries have voluntarily agreed to intended nationally
determined contributions.
2
The 1992 UNFCCC outlined the principle of shared but differentiated responsibility for emission reductions. Consequently,
whereas developed countries (listed in the Annex I to the Convention) faced mandatory emission reduction targets, developing
countries such as China and India did not. This has contributed to the so-called China Excuse, the contention of some US
interest groups regarding the US being asked to sacrifice economic growth by limiting its emissions whereas its economic
competitors such as China are exempt from it.
318 Dolšak · Prakash

their benefits are global and nonexcludable (although not uniform because successful mitigation
will benefit climate-vulnerable areas more than others). This creates incentives for some countries
to cheat even on their voluntary commitments (5, 6).
Alongside mitigation, adaptation is the second pillar of climate policy. Climate adaptation
refers to policies, proactive or reactive (7), that seek to reduce the biophysical, social, and economic
vulnerability (or enhance resilience) of a given area, organization, population group, or individuals
to climate change (8). In contrast to mitigation, the benefits of climate adaptation tend to be local
(9, 10). Therefore, collective action issues rooted in free riding that impede mitigation are probably
less pronounced for climate adaptation (11).3
Moreover, with the scientific and policy consensus on climate change, one expects that gov-
ernance units will enthusiastically support adaptation. Furthermore, given the intensive interna-
tional and policy focus on climate action, and the high level of technical expertise being devoted
to climate action, governance units’ adaptation policies will be informed by technical and eco-
nomic considerations. Governance units will probably seek to adopt the optimum adaptation
policy mix that reflects the prevailing scientific and economic wisdom (13). For example, scientists
could pinpoint locations that are most vulnerable to extreme weather events, local governance
units would use this scientific knowledge to develop their adaptation policies, and international
donors would support such efforts instead of imposing their policy templates. An economic ap-
proach might identify the areas that provide the highest net benefits to the ecosystem and the
society, and again local governance units will use their expertise to develop their adaptation
portfolio.
Why do adaptation policy portfolios not match these theoretical optimums: the best policy
type being supplied by the most competent actor for the most deserving sector/location? We call
this the adaptation puzzle. Analysts and scientists would probably blame it on politics (14). Sir Paul
Nurse, a Nobel Laureate and the President of United Kingdom’s Royal Society, notes that “he
feels “distressed” when scientists find clear evidence that contributes to a particular issue—such
as drugs policy—only for politicians to ignore it “because they don’t think it will play well with
the public” (15). The recommendation is that policymakers should listen to scientists and insulate
themselves from politics.
We suggest that this reflects a narrow view of adaptation, and even a narrower view of pol-
itics. We suggest conceptualizing adaptation-as-politics because adaptation speaks to the issues
of power, conflicting policy preferences, resource allocation, and administrative tensions. Poli-
tics is not a negation of rationality, a roadblock in achieving policy optimums. Collective action
challenges are an expression of politics and occur because decision makers are (boundedly) ratio-
nal actors playing “games” with specific payoff structures. Most times, the theoretical optimum
outcomes that maximize net benefits are difficult to achieve. As Ostrom (4) shows, if the rules
governing these policy games are changed, actors will start behaving in remarkably different ways.
But changing these rules can involve substantial costs, and rational actors often have to func-
tion in a world with technically and economically suboptimal policy. Politicians paying attention
to the public sentiment are behaving rationally. It is critical to understand what shapes public
preferences, instead of asking politicians to ignore them.
In adaptation policy making, governance actors are embedded in different policy games with
varying incentive structures. Their incentives are shaped by their perceptions about climate risks,
3
In addition, there is the issue of risk perception. Sunstein (12, p. 508) notes the following: “The United States is unlikely to
take significant steps to reduce greenhouse gases unless the perceived costs of risk reduction are decreased, an available incident
triggers fear of significant and relatively imminent harm, sustained analysis or influential leaders suggest that Americans face
serious risks.”
www.annualreviews.org • Climate Adaptation Politics 319

policy priorities, institutional dynamics, and resources constraints. Consequently, it is conceptually

difficult to identify an optimum adaptation portfolio (16). In addition to the issue of uncertainty
about the impact of climate change, actors vary in their perceptions about their vulnerability to
climate stressors (17–19). Furthermore, adaptation has many dimensions. It involves investing in
hard infrastructure (such as physical structures) as well as soft infrastructure (for example, the
social and economic capacity of the community) (20). The latter is difficult to carefully assess and
benchmark against a theoretical optimum. Some dimensions of social and economic capacity may
be in conflict (see 21 for some literature on the unexpected implications of economic growth on
gender equity).
Even if one drops the quest for an optimal adaptation policy portfolio, should an individual
policy be assessed with the standard cost-benefit approach? Do governance units adopt policies
with the highest net benefits? This analytic approach has merits but should be used with cau-
tion. There is extensive debate about the appropriate metrics with which to assess the benefits of
adaptation policies (22–24). First, it is not clear what the appropriate type and level of adaptation
investment should be because actors have different preferences and abilities to live with environ-
mental risk (25). Moreover, given the uncertainty about the timing and location of climate change
impact, it is difficult to predict ex ante (i.e., before the climate stress can be observed as upsetting
the status quo) whether a given level of adaptation investment constitutes an underinvestment or
overinvestment to address the climate stress.
What then drives adaptation policy making? Why are some governance units enthusiastic
whereas others are lukewarm? Why do units focus on different aspects of adaptation? First, there
is an issue of mismatch in policy priorities. Although global policy elites attach a high priority
to climate action, local governance units may not share their perspective. They have a differ-
ent perception of climate risks. Or, local governance units may see a political payoff in devoting
resources to address the more visible and immediate challenges of, for example, economic de-
velopment, deforestation, and desertification. Second, local units may prefer to wait and assess
the new threats posed by climate change (reactive adaptation), instead of proactively committing
resources to address specific climate-related stressors (12). In addition to risk perception issues,
local units may fear policy, political, or technological lock-ins if they move too fast on adaptation.
Third, local units may have specific preferences about how, when, and where to adapt but not the
resources to do so. They may face political challenges in raising resources internally, for exam-
ple, via taxation. They could seek help from the national government but it may not share their
priorities. This local-national tension may play out at the international level as well. Developing
countries might be able to secure resources from international donors, but may not agree with
donors’ policy preferences and templates. Fourth, governance units may already have a disaster
management infrastructure that they think will work well for adaptation. They may not feel the
need to either rebrand it as climate adaptation or create a parallel administrative infrastructure
devoted solely to adaptation.
Thus, in spite of generating predominantly local benefits and the global scientific and policy
consensus for its support, climate adaptation navigates political, economic, and institutional com-
plexities. It faces political contestation, interest group pressure, and institutional inertia. From a
political science perspective, we expect that there will be considerable variations across units in
the types and levels of adaptation policies. And to explain this variation, scholars should carefully
study its politics.
Adaptation occurs via individuals (private adaptation), firms (business adaptation), commu-
nity organizations (community adaptation), and the government (public adaptation) (26, 27).
Our review focuses primarily on public adaptation, that is, efforts conceptualized, designed, and

Table 1 Climate adaptation policyscape: a political perspective

Political dimension Policy dynamics Policy manifestation
Who Which actor is tasked with Should existing disaster management organizations be tasked with
developing and implementing providing adaptation or are new structures created?
adaptation policies? How is the division of resources and responsibilities apportioned
between local versus national levels?
What What types of adaptation policies Reactive versus proactive adaptation
are provided and who benefits Soft versus hard adaptation
from them? Government provided or coproduced with citizens
Maladaptation
Adaptation spillovers
Equity
Why Why are specific types of policies Visible versus less visible adaptation policies
preferred? Role of international influences in favoring specific policies
implemented by governmental (subnational and national) bodies.4 Following Laswell (29) and
Dupuisa & Biesbroek (30), the remainder of the article is organized in three sections, followed by
a conclusion.
In Section 2, we examine who develops and implements adaptation policies. Specifically, we
explore whether adaptation is simply old wine of disaster management in the new bottle of climate
policy. We also review the tensions between national and local policy formulation and imple-
mentation. In Section 3, we examine what type of adaptation is provided, including hard and soft
infrastructure. We critique the emphasis on soft infrastructure given its somewhat open-ended
and expansive conceptual boundaries. We then examine how adaptation in one sphere can create
negative consequences in other spheres. In Section 4, we explore why specific types of adaptation
policies are provided and why politicians may prefer to invest in hard and visible infrastructure as
opposed to soft, less visible infrastructure. We also consider the role of international influences
in shaping the adaptation policyscape. We critique international donors’ strong preference for
nongovernmental organizations’ (NGOs’) involvement because it can prove problematic in some
political systems. We conclude in Section 5 (Table 1).
2. WHO DEVELOPS ADAPTATION POLICIES?
2.1. Adaptation, Old and New

Is adaptation old wine in a new bottle? After all, humans have faced uncertain weather and changing
climate conditions since time immemorial (31). They have protected themselves (with varying lev-
els of success) from nature through adjustments and innovations. Take the case of water. Farmers
have practiced crop diversification and planted crops that are better able to withstand fluctuations
in water availability (32, 33). Communities and governments have created infrastructure to collect
and store rainwater, dug wells, and constructed canals to move water from one location to another.
Lucero et al. (34) provide the example of how Mayan society dealt with annual variations in water
4
Mendelsohn (28) makes an interesting point about the underprovision of private adaptation. Private actors, such as firms
and individuals, underprovide adaptation when their actions create positive spillovers, or when complementary efforts from
other actors are required to realize the full potential of adaptation efforts. Thus, absent governmental intervention, such
private adaptation will tend to be underprovided. Future research should carefully assess how local governments are allocating
adaptation funding and which specific groups stand to benefit the most from such projects.

availability during its Classic Period (250–950 AD). The authors note that the Mayan kings rec-
ognized that water management was the key pillar of their political survival. Hence, they invested
in creating physical (hard) infrastructure such as artificial reservoirs to ensure water availability
during drought, and in cultural (soft) infrastructure such as public ceremonies and festivals that
celebrated water and reinforced the importance of the physical infrastructures they had created to
enhance social welfare. Pandey et al. (35) document rainwater harvesting structures constructed
by different kingdoms and empires starting with the earthworks in 4500 BC in the Thar Desert
in response to the weakening of SW Monsoons. In their study of urban water systems in ancient
Greece, Koutsoyiannis et al. (36, p. 45) document several remarkable achievements and go on to
suggest that these water management “practices and institutions are relevant even today, as the
water-related problems of modern societies are not very different from those in antiquity.”
Given their vast experience of dealing with weather events, most local governments have some
sort of administrative system that can create physical infrastructures as well as formulate and
implement rules and laws. These laws could range from, for example, regulating water use in rural
settings to zoning regulations and building codes in urban areas. Government units typically have
fire departments (part time, volunteer, fulltime, and professional firefighters) and a police force to
respond to natural disasters (37). When the scale of weather-related disruption overwhelms their
resources and infrastructure, local governments work with national-level organizations such as
armed forces or specialized agencies such as the United States Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA) (38). Viewed in this way, climate adaptation will involve local governance units
working with existing policies, personnel, and administrative units that address natural hazards.
But do scholars and practitioners recognize the above capacities as adaptation? They are of-
ten asked to create an inventory of adaptation policies for national adaptation plans (NAPs), for
example, or to assess levels of adaptation preparedness. Perhaps, they should recognize that gover-
nance units will probably utilize their existing administrative systems for climate adaptation. For
one thing, duplication of infrastructure is often expensive. Furthermore, as bureaucratic politics
literature notes, existing administrative bodies have an interest not only in surviving but also in
expanding their budgets and head counts (39). If these bodies see substantial funding for climate
adaptation, they will probably relabel themselves as climate adaptation bodies. This relabeling
might allow these administrative units to proclaim their readiness to adapt to climate change.5
However, it is not clear whether these relabeled bodies will necessarily provide superior climate
resilience in relation to the “old” disaster management departments. After all, relabeling may not
introduce any substantive changes in how the department is organized, how it perceives various
climate challenges, and how it seeks to respond to them. Thus, without “reinventing” the admin-
istrative body in fundamental ways, relabeling an existing structure would probably do little to
improve climate resilience. The challenge is that climate resilience administrative systems need
to take a more holistic view of climate challenges instead of responding to them in a piecemeal
fashion.
How then to assess the readiness of the administrative bodies for adaptation? This requires
identifying specific climate stressors or threats and understanding the extent to which the gover-
nance unit has done the planning and has the administrative competences (economic and technical)
to implement these plans. We must understand the extent to which existing disaster management
systems can respond to the increasing scale and increased frequency of existing climate stressors
5
In our review of the literature, we find that scholars have outlined several frameworks to guide adaptation assessment (40–43).
There is an opportunity for large N studies that translate these excellent frameworks into quantifiable assessment of both the
hard and the soft adaptation capacities of governance units.

and to new types of stressors.6 Depending on the type of climate challenge, the level of stress
it causes, and the “slack” (45) in the administrative system to accommodate these perturbations,
administrative and policy changes might be required. These could be incremental or transforma-
tional (40, 42). In the former, the policy systems are modified or upgraded at the margins only. In
the latter, however, the governance unit recognizes that the existing systems will not suffice and
creates new policies and administrative structures.
Take the case of the agriculture sector where climate change is likely to increase frequency of
both abiotic stresses (heat, drought, rain) and biotic stresses (pests and diseases) (32). Depending
on the frequency, level, and types of these stresses, along with the perceived level of preparedness,
some governance units may decide on an incremental response. Others might assess that their
existing institutional and social infrastructure, as well as technical capacity, are inadequate. They
may undertake deep-seated changes in both technology and institutions: discontinue farming of
some crops, accept the extinction of some species, or relocate elsewhere to a more hospitable
terrain (46). In the context of Australian agriculture where wheat is an important crop, units have
responded with a mix of incremental and transformative strategies. After the decline of yields by
5.5% between 1998 and 2008 due to rising temperatures and changed rainfall patterns—especially
the decline in winter rain—some farmers with appropriate capacities have moved their operations
to the wetter areas of Southern Australia, whereas others have adopted incremental strategies for
their existing lands to reduce water runoff such as conservation tillage (47, 48).
Arguably, adaptation often requires a multisectoral response. Sometimes a new administrative
structure is required, especially if the existing administrative bodies have confusing and overlapping
mandates. However, governments may fail to respond to such problems. In the case of Uganda,
Ampaire et al. (49) highlight the problem of such administrative confusion: Although the central
government has formulated a National Climate Change Policy, it is not linked to other national-
level policies such as the Agriculture Policy, the Land Policy, the Environment Management
Policy, and the Forestry Policy.
However, such administrative confusion can have a profound political logic. In the context
of Nepal, Nightingale (50) notes the influence of national-level politics on the distribution of
authority on climate change issues. Nepalese leaders decided to give jurisdiction over climate
change policy to the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Environment (MSTE). In part, this
was because international donors want the environment ministry as the nodal body for their
funding and projects. Local politicians, not wanting powerful ministries getting more power and
resources, and therefore becoming too big for them to control (51), found this to be politically
acceptable; historically, MSTE has been a weak ministry compared to the more powerful ones
such as Ministry of Forest and Soil Conservation and the Water Ministry. Given the fractured
nature of Nepalese politics, the politicians agreed that donors could funnel climate aid via MSTE.
However, they did not want MSTE to become too powerful and control this lucrative resource
stream. Hence, they gave jurisdiction for mitigation programs to the Ministry for Forest and
Soil Conservation. This discussion suggests that administrative response to climate adaptation
cannot be interpreted in terms of its impact on resilience or administrative rationality. Climate
action speaks to fundamental questions of power and resource allocation. Donors want their
funds to be handled by appropriate and competent actors. To ensure this, donors may want
adaptation programs to be managed by environmental ministries. However, such reliance on
6
In their study of policy response to urban heat waves, Hess et al. (44) note the debate about whether climate change will
accentuate existing health hazards or present fundamentally new public health challenges. If the latter, the existing public
health infrastructure may be inadequate to respond to climate change.

standard operating procedures for distributing grants can shape bureaucratic and organizational
dynamics in unexpected ways. What if the ministry labeled as the “environmental ministry” is not
the most competent organization to manage such programs? Instead of fulfilling donors’ intent,
politicians can leverage donors’ operating procedures (including preference for the appropriately
labeled organization) as a tool for pursuing their own political ends that may eventually undermine
the effectiveness of adaptation efforts.
The clash between political and administrative rationality is on a vivid display in Mexico’s
Upper Lerma River Valley where existing administrative structures are charged with supplying
adaptation policies. Eakin et al. (52) note that the rapid urbanization that has encroached upon
rural spaces, often accompanied by new construction in the traditional flood plains, has posed new
challenges on, for example, how to handle excessive precipitation. However, the disaster response
infrastructure continues to view flooding in terms of an agricultural problem that is within the
purview of agricultural and water agencies. Thus, in mixed land use areas with urban and rural areas
coexisting, new systems need to be established that allow the agriculture-focused departments to
work with urban managers to handle the issue of flooding (53).
But suppose policymakers decide that effective adaptation requires reorganizing the policy-
making system. Such reorganization can take many forms. New administrative structures could
be created that take over the jurisdiction of existing ones. Alternatively, they could place different
administrative units under a common umbrella such as the Department of Homeland Security
(54) that was created in the aftermath of 9/11. Although several countries have established new
administrative structures to respond to climate change, we have not found examples of countries
or subnational units establishing so-called climate czars by merging existing units (or creating um-
brella bodies) to coordinate their multisectoral climate policies; however, would such new bodies
produce different policy outputs? Future research should examine whether new administrative
units tend to develop adaptation plans that are more technocratic documents (akin to FEMA) or
holistic plans that place adaptation in the broader political and social context. Furthermore, do
they create plans that concentrate power at the national level, or are these new bodies sensitive to
the issue of polycentric governance that Ostrom (55) has highlighted?
2.2. Tension Between National and Local Adaptation

Adaptation is implemented at the local level but much of its planning seems to take place at the
national level. Following UNFCCC’s guidance (http://unfccc.int/adaptation/workstreams/
national_adaptation_programmes_of_action/items/4585.php), several countries have devel-
oped National Adaptation Programs of Action (NAPAs) to inventorize their projects and signal
the country’s political commitment at the highest level to address climate change. As of 2016, the
UNFCCC (http://unfccc.int/adaptation/workstreams/national_adaptation_programmes_
of_action/items/4585.php) Secretariat has received NAPAs from 51 least developing countries.
These plans provide a useful framework to begin assessing how countries view adaptation chal-
lenges and how they propose to address them. How do national plans relate to local adaptation
efforts operating at a national level? If local regions face unique climate threats, arguably regional-
level planning might be more appropriate. But it is not clear whether regional plans will emerge
from an agreed national template, or regional plans will shape the national template itself. Al-
though the omniscience of the national planner should not be assumed, uncoordinated regional
plans can lead to incoherent national efforts as well (4). As a polycentric governance model sug-
gests, the scale of the problem should probably cohere with the scale at which the governance
response is conceived (56, 57). Although a national plan could nest several regional or subnational
plans, we have not seen systematic evidence of this nested approach to adaptation planning.

Biesbroek et al. (58) offer a comparative analysis of the National Adaptation Strategies (NASs)
of seven EU countries. They find that NASs tend to offer general guidelines that lack specificity.
Finally, they tend to work with an expansive notion of climate vulnerability, without recognizing
how this may vary across climate stressors and across different geographical and social contexts.
Disturbingly, they find that NASs typically do not consider different climate scenarios. This is
surprising because there is uncertainty about the timing and magnitude of the effect of climate
change on specific stressors.
Other scholars have also noted the problems that Biesbroek et al. (58) identify. They criticize
national-level adaptation plans for lacking specificity, failing to connect with the situation’s local
experiences, and ignoring issues of climate equity. Examining national adaptation strategies pro-
duced by OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, Panic
& Ford (59) offer several criticisms, including not adequately acknowledging the challenges faced
by vulnerable sections of society, not adequately taking into account location-specific risks, and
not carefully mapping implementation and funding issues. This discussion suggests that the lack
of specificity in NAPAs is not limited to developing countries. The variable quality of NAPAs
probably cannot be attributed to administrative capacity deficits because developed countries tend
to do well on the capacity dimension. Future work should identify factors that drive variations in
the quality of NAPAs, especially their specificity and careful attention to local risks, climate justice
(60), and implementation issues.
Given the international pressure to prepare NAPAs, the typical bureaucratic response probably
is to produce a standard document that allows them to “check the box.” Local units, be it in the
developing world or the developed world, probably do not have the time and resources (along
with the perception that this is not “their” project) to think deeply about the specific adaptation
details. Thus, in explaining the variation in quality of adaptation planning, future work should
focus on the political incentives for the local governance units in this regard.
Adaptation planning can also suffer from local-national tensions. National-level technical bu-
reaucracies that propose adaptation plans sometimes overlook ground-level reality, and do not
sufficiently appreciate the multiple challenges that communities confront in their everyday suste-
nance. On the basis of their field work in the Rakai district of Uganda, Ampaire et al. (49) report
that the central government not only tends to dominate the formulation of adaptation policy, it
also has poor communication channels with district-level actors even for plan implementation.
Examining adaptation in three African countries (Swaziland, Botswana, and Malawi), Stringer
et al. (61) find a tension between local adaptation efforts, which the communities have proba-
bly been undertaking for a while, and the policy-led managed adaptation often outlined by the
technical bureaucracies of the national governments. Their comparative study shows the folly of
assuming that local responses are reactive whereas policy-driven planned adaptation is forward
looking. They also highlight that local adaptation confronts a core resource allocation problem
facing farming communities. Farmers might face multiple challenges, including climate change,
in their everyday lives (62, 63). Consequently, it is a folly to expect that farmers will begin focusing
predominantly on adaptation just because this is now an important national and international pol-
icy priority. Policy-driven, top-down adaptation must therefore be sensitive to its coherence with
local priorities. Otherwise, local actors will pay it a lip service and treat it as yet another mandate
from above, instead of as an opportunity to improve their lives.
Furthermore, before prescribing specific adaptation activities, national planners must survey
and understand what communities are already doing to address climate change stresses, and then
explore how their technical adaptation approaches can leverage existing practices. Take the case
of Norway (64), a country that does very well on traditional proxies of adaptive capacity such as
income, education levels, and social cohesion (65). Næss et al. (66) compare how the municipalities

of Skedsmo and Ringebu responded to the 1995 floods. They find that local governments are
skeptical about national-level guidelines about adaptation, especially because such guidelines tend
to ignore local knowledge. This supports the argument about the virtues of polycentric approaches
to climate adaptation. Although Ostrom (55) has tended to focus predominantly on mitigation
issues, her argument extends well to the realm of adaptation. Naess et al. (66) also criticize the
technocratic orientation of adaptation approaches, especially its lack of understanding that flood
management has to be rooted in social dimensions. They note the following: “Flood protection
is traditionally the domain of technical departments, which is reflected in a technical bias on
proposed solutions such as building of dikes along rivers and drainage of sediments. Within the
municipal administration, flood problems were also perceived as being caused by lack of technical
protection schemes” (66, p. 133). However, they suggest that these technical solutions probably
do not address the problem. Worse, they probably redirect attention to another location without
such structures, an issue of maladaptation that we discuss in the next section. Viewed this way,
climate change adaptation could become a zero-sum game that allows the privileged to redirect
climate stressors toward the less privileged.
Of course, the above discussion raised a fundamental political question: What explains the
strong role national planners play in adaptation, as reflected in the preponderance of intergov-
ernmental regimes in this issue area? We suggest looking at institutional design that centralizes
decision-making authority (political authority) and the centralization of fiscal power (economic
authority). Take the example of the city of Cape Town in South Africa. Mukheibir & Ziervogel
(67) report that, although Cape Town is likely to confront climate issues such as rainfall variabil-
ity, the city has not been able to devote adequate resources to adaptation. Instead, much of the
adaptation planning effort is directed from the national level where considerable resources are
available.
This sort of administrative centralization is not limited to developing countries. Consider
the case of the $1 billion earmarked for the 2014 National Disaster Resilience Competition.
This initiative was sponsored by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and
sought to encourage local climate adaptation initiatives. It eventually awarded $48 million to
Louisiana to relocate the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe (with 25 occupied houses) off the Isle
de Jean Charles, which was being submerged by rising sea levels. However, it denied funding to
Newtok, Alaska, populated by the Native American Yupik tribe that faced a similar predicament
(68, 69). Relocation decision, or government-initiated managed retreats from flood-prone areas,
are expensive policies. As the displeasure of Alaskan politicians over the denial of funding to
Newtok suggests, climate adaptation will increasingly get mired in budgetary politics, given the
concentration of fiscal resources at the national level.
This sort of budgetary tension is particularly visible in the context of international climate
funding. Because these funding decisions are decided in intergovernmental forums such as the
UNFCCC, national governments have center stage. Consequently, much of formal adaptation
planning and documentation required by intergovernmental funders are developed at the national
level. This is not to say that subnational or city-level efforts are always neglected in interna-
tional climate policy. There are examples of city-level programs such as the C40 network (70)
and Covenant of Mayors (71) that reflect global coordination of subnational efforts. As of now,
however, most of these efforts tend to be focused on mitigation and not on adaptation.
In sum, the above discussion raises an important concern about the mismatch between the
locus of action and the locus of funding, and how this provokes budgetary politics. If adaptation
is to remain a predominately local effort (nested in regional and national plans), local governance
units should have sufficient autonomy and resources to construct and implement their own plan
(56). This raises tough institutional and political questions about decentralization, fiscal power,

and national politics. Global institutions, multilateral banks, and external donors interested in
adaptation have negotiated primarily with national governments, and local actors have had only
a token presence at the decision-making table. In this policy process, local concerns are likely to
get less attention and unfortunately, the local commitment for adaptation will suffer.
3. TYPES OF ADAPTATION POLICIES
3.1. Soft Infrastructure and Adaptation

Adaptation requires substantial investment in hard infrastructure: new sea walls to protect against
sea-level rise, canals to move water, rain-harvesting structures, etc. This hard infrastructure prob-
ably needs to be developed at the local level but cohere with a national plan. After all, if local
infrastructure malfunctions, the effects could ripple across the whole economy. Consider criti-
cal infrastructures required for the normal functioning of the digital economy. If a windstorm
knocks down power lines, then the server farms critical for the functioning of the global inter-
net system, for example, might be out of commission. This is not a far-fetched idea. Take the
case of the hub and the spoke system that structures the operations of the airline industry (72).
In recent years, extreme weather events that have affected major airline hubs such as Atlanta,
Frankfurt, or Singapore have severely disrupted international air travel. If critical infrastructure is
“local,” then subnational governance units charged with providing adaptation services will need
the resources, tools, and training to secure these critical facilities. This is where soft infrastruc-
ture comes in. Scholars recognize that along with hard infrastructure, adaptation also necessitates
significant investments in soft infrastructure, namely improving the technical, organizational, and
social capacities of administrative and social systems to respond to climate-related stress (73, 74).
Soft adaptation has a critical citizen-government dimension. The reason is that some aspects
of soft adaptation are coproduced by governments and citizens (75, 76). Consequently, even local
adaptation has a public good component and faces collective action issues. Adaptation therefore
requires strengthening social capital that allows citizens to work with administrative agencies and
with each other. This should motivate governments to engage with nonstate actors, including civil
society actors, starting from the planning stage.
The role of coproduction in enhancing adaptive capacity would probably vary actors and
sectors. Scholars note that public health has an important social coproduction aspect, beyond its
medical/technical one, because it requires active citizen involvement in ensuring one’s own health
and that of others. Simple tasks such as washing hands before serving food or not spitting in public
places can help control the spread of contagious diseases. However, governments alone cannot
accomplish such tasks; citizens have to be educated, nudged, and reminded to undertake them
because private actions have public consequences.
Community engagement and social capital (77, 78) should therefore be particularly salient in
public health adaptation. In fact, adaptation scholars should learn from public health scholarship
in this regard. Ebi et al. (79) remind us that preventive public health seeks to reduce the vulnera-
bility of the community to health risks. This is analogous to what climate change adaptation seeks
to accomplish. Not surprisingly, as Ebi et al. contend, public health scholars recognize the role
of social capital in effective adaptation “because the potential health impacts of climate change,
and therefore the actions to reduce these impacts, are intimately interwoven with specific popula-
tion and regional vulnerabilities. Public health interventions generally have been less effective in
populations with a lower SES [socioeconomic status; brackets added]. Stakeholder engagement is
needed to ensure that messages designed to reach vulnerable groups provide the information and
motivation necessary for individuals to make appropriate choices” (79, p. 502).

What if the social capital and community engagement interventions take place in contexts
that are not supportive of civic engagement in public policy? In some social systems where gov-
ernments have traditionally not consulted with civil society actors, initiating such collaborations
de novo can pose a challenge. In authoritarian contexts, the state has a political logic for not
giving legitimacy to actors beyond its control. Even in post-authoritarian societies, states often
have not acquired the skills, capacities, and the culture of engaging with nonstate actors. Fur-
thermore, citizens are often skeptical of civic groups and do not see them as authentic voices of
their people. This is because NGOs historically have functioned as front organizations for the
regime. Furthermore, the prevalence of the state-sponsored NGO sector is well established in
authoritarian countries such as China (80), where they are referred to as GONGOs (government-
organized NGOs). In the contemporary period, NGOs tend to be funded by foreign donors,
resulting in their neglecting local accountability. This is a standard critique of the weakness of
civil society in Eastern and Central European countries (81). Given this background, it is difficult
to see some states successfully engaging with nonstate actors to strengthen the soft adaptation
infrastructure.
In recent decades, the government-NGO relationships have taken a new direction because
some national governments have turned against civil society groups, particularly the ones that
receive foreign funding. We bring up this issue because climate policies are being constructed in
the context of political tensions. Dupuy et al. (82) document how approximately 40 developing
countries have enacted laws that restrict foreign funding to domestically operating NGOs. In
addition to soft infrastructure issues, this poses a problem for the distribution of climate aid. Since
the 1990s, donors have begun channeling a significant percentage of their developmental funding
through NGOs (83), a route that many governments have now restricted. If the evolution of soft
adaptation infrastructure requires active collaboration between governments and NGOs, and for-
eign funding is critical to support this relationship, the prospects of developing this infrastructure
are slim, given the backlash against foreign funding of NGOs.
Finally, scholars should probably reexamine the concept of soft infrastructure. It is a somewhat
fuzzy concept because its definition is open ended. It could conceivably cover various social and
interpersonal interactions (84). Some social relationships can certainly improve social cohesion.
But social capital can also create an “in-group mentality” where the group cohesion increases by
excluding those outside the group. This is the tension between bridging and bonding social capital
that scholars have alluded to (85, 86). It is conceivable that adaptation faces opposition because
some groups feel that these funds will be deployed to help “others,” maybe even at their expense.
Soft infrastructure has multiple dimensions, and it is not clear which ones governance leaders
should prioritize. Given its open-ended definition, vested interests can capture the policy-making
process and push through their favorite projects under the guise of soft infrastructure. Further-
more, soft infrastructure policies might ignite social and political tensions over the distribution
of costs and benefits of adaptation. In multiethnic societies, such tensions could become serious if
costs and benefits are borne by different ethnic groups (87–89). Even in ethnically homogenous
but economically stratified societies, if adaptation is viewed as reproducing inequalities, we can
expect to see pushback by the underprivileged to climate action (17). Thus, social systems will vary
in their adaptive investments due to their economic and technological abilities, as well as their
social and political characteristics. Governance units may not invest in adaptation, even when it
is technically desirable, because of the social tensions it might ignite. Once we recognize these
considerations, we can begin to explore why social systems (and individuals within them) vary in
climate change adaptation approaches.
Viewed this way, scholars should debate about the merits of an intuitively useful but fuzzy
concept of soft adaptation infrastructure. One option is for scholars to focus on sharply defined

Trade-offs among the various

dimensions are often not clear.
Challenge 1:
Different interest groups favor
It has multiple dimensions: different dimensions; this can create
social, technical and equity problems as the preferences of
organizational capacities. the more powerful groups prevail.
If social capacity is enhnaced by

social cohesion, it can encourage
in-group mentality, leading to the
exclusion of minorities and their
Creating soft adaptation preferences.
infrastructure
Civil society is poorly developed

in authoritarian societies. Former
communist countries have little
Challenge 2:
tradition of civic engagement with
It requires coproduction the government.
with citizens; hence the
important role of civil society.
A large number of governments
have cracked down on civil society,
including by placing restrictions on
the inflow of foreign funds.
Figure 1
Challenges in soft adaptation.
issues such as education levels, wealth, income equality, and gender equality, instead of sub-
suming all under soft infrastructure. We believe this is an important subject for future research
(Figure 1).
3.2. Critiques of Adaptation

Adaptation is necessary because climate is already changing and even drastic mitigation effort
cannot reverse global warming (unless some breakthrough carbon capture or negative emission
technologies are developed). But do adaptation policies always enhance local resilience to climate
stressors? If not, why is this the case?
Historically, adaptation was a neglected if not a taboo topic (90) in climate policy because some
feared that adaptation may reduce the policy commitment to mitigation. This could take place
in two ways: psychological drivers and budgetary drivers. Adaptation policies might lead some to
believe that climate issues have been addressed, and they may even begin to lead more carbon-
intensive lifestyles, the so-called rebound effect (91). This is consistent with social psychology
insights on the risk compensation hypothesis, which suggests that actions to reduce the negative
consequences of risky behaviors may actually lead to encouraging such behaviors (92, 93). The
classic example is of regulations requiring use of seatbelts to decrease traffic fatalities that may
actually encourage reckless driving and eventually increase fatalities (94).
Of course, if the infrastructures for mitigation and adaptation were identical, the adaptation-
mitigation tension would not arise. But this is not the case, and budgetary politics could require
making tough choices. Suppose communities face budgetary constraints that allow them to either
invest in renewable energy or build seawalls. Creating solar energy facilities and wind farms

connected to the national grid can allow communities to contribute to climate change mitigation,
but not to local adaptation. Similarly, building seawalls could help communities adapt to rising
sea levels but not contribute to climate change mitigation.
The second critique of adaptation pertains to its negative spillovers (95–97). Maladapted
projects reduce the climate vulnerability of a governance unit but reduce its climate resilience
over time, or those of other units, sectors, and geographies.7 Hannah et al. (98) show that in
response to temperature increases, winegrowers may relocate their vineyards to higher altitudes
but in the process may disturb the ecosystem and natural vegetation. Or, if they stay in the exist-
ing location and use sprinklers for temperature control, this may put excessive demands on local
supply of freshwater. Magnan et al. (99) provide examples of different aspects of maladaptation in
Hulhumalé, Maldives; Afar, Ethiopia; Cape Town, South Africa; and Bangladesh. An infrastruc-
ture project to raise the river bank may encourage homeowners to build houses in the flood plain,
thereby reducing their resilience to future floods (100, 101). The construction of an embankment
or seawall may direct erosion elsewhere. A desalinization plant in Melbourne, Australia, that en-
hances the resilience of the water supply system damages several sites that are important to the
Bunurong Aboriginal community (102).
Maladaptation may manifest in budgetary issues as well. International donors might commit
funds to specific adaptation projects (with high media salience) but simultaneously reduce their
appropriations for development projects that could enhance community resilience by creating new
economic opportunities. Alston et al. (103) report that in adapting to the economic challenges
posed by climate change, Bangladeshi families are marrying off their daughters at an early age.
This is a result of the family’s anticipation of increasing dowry demands as their daughters age.
Anticipating that climate change might undermine their economic capacities in the future, they
adapt by forcing their daughters to marry early, an action that has adverse consequence for the
young bride, and eventually for the society. Scholars note that the social-economic resilience of
a community is strengthened with gender equality; arguably, this forcible marriage undermines
long-term resilience of the community to climate change and other natural stressors.
4. WHY SPECIFIC TYPES OF ADAPTATION POLICIES EMERGE
4.1. Policy Visibility and Political Choices

Adaptation involves political choices and balancing competing demands. Governance units have
to decide the specific dimensions they will focus on and how they will construct adaptation policies
and programs. In some cases, adaptation is probably a “routine” bureaucratic decision guided by
standard operating procedures (104) of disaster management units. But for nonroutine decisions,
especially when resources and budgets are at stake, it is less clear what sorts of adaptation policies
will emerge.
Take the case of soft and hard infrastructure. We have alluded to how soft infrastructure is
ensnared in the political problems of engaging with civil society. In addition, policymakers might
have a higher payoff if they invest hard physical infrastructure because citizens favor these policies
and their outcomes are visible. Hard infrastructure allows leaders to demonstrate that they are
solving problem: After all, leaders get rewarded for solving problems, not merely flagging them
(105). In their study of the Middle East and North Africa, Sowers et al. (106) find that governments
7
Should maladaptation exclude wasteful policies that politicians push through under the guise of adaptation, such as an
expensive infrastructure project that does very little to improve resilience or reduce vulnerability to climate change? We
suggest such policies should be treated as sham adaptation as opposed to maladaptation.

place low priority on social engagements as mechanisms to enhance the adaptive capacity. Instead,
they devote resources to creating hard infrastructure such as water supply projects, desalination
projects, canals, and dams.
The political payoffs associated with visible projects might also motivate policymakers to invest
in reactive policies, and not proactive ones. Healy & Malhotra (107) examine voter preferences
regarding federal spending via FEMA in response to disaster damage. They find that voters reward
political parties for reactive policies (such as delivering disaster relief ), but not for investing
in proactive polices (disaster preparedness). This is especially worrisome because “$1 spent on
preparedness is worth about $15 in terms of the future damage it mitigates” (107, p. 387). Indeed,
politicians all over the world make a point to survey areas where a disaster has struck. On one hand,
disasters can open the “policy window” (108) for politicians to introduce new policy initiatives by
invoking the inadequacies of existing policies. Disasters can allow them to demonstrate that they
are in charge and responsive to the needs of their constituents (109). This is consistent with broader
policy research that emphasizes that political leaders want to invest in the provision of visible public
goods that allow them to proclaim their achievements (110, 111). If climate adaptation can create
visible hard infrastructure, politicians will probably have incentives to support it. However, if
adaptation entails investment in less visible soft infrastructure and capacities, public support for
such measures might not be forthcoming.
But policy visibility may not be the only driver of adaptation preferences. Demand for specific
adaptation projects also depends on perceptions about climate risk. As Mercer (112) points out, the
willingness of local communities in Papua New Guinea to invest in climate adaptation is shaped by
their understanding of how climate change is affecting their vulnerability to natural hazards. These
communities recognize the multiple challenges they face. For example, the community might seek
to focus on its forestry practices because it recognizes that these practices have contributed to
the destruction of rainforest (113). Thus, these communities may prioritize a change in forestry
practices over adaptation infrastructure projects. In all probability, these sorts of investments will
not be noticed in adaptation assessment, although they are critical in enhancing the capacity of
the community to respond to climate stressors.
Tucker et al. (114) make a similar argument in the context of coffee producers in Central
America and Mexico. They suggest that although coffee producers acknowledge the challenges
posed by climate change, they do not believe that this poses grave danger to them and their
communities. Indeed, they may not attribute extreme weather events to climate change, and
hence, may not be motivated to invest in policies to modify their agricultural practices to address
climate-related environmental stresses.
4.2. International Influences on Local Adaptation

International influences play an important role in motivating local communities to invest in adap-
tation. They work through a normative logic and an instrumental logic (115). International norma-
tive discourses outline policy templates for governments to follow. As the world society literature
suggests (116), coercive, mimetic, and normative isomorphic pressures (117) drive the diffusion
of these templates across the world. In this norm-focused perspective, governance units are more
likely to follow these templates if they are embedded in the international networks of NGOs and
intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) that serve as the conveyor belts for the diffusion process.
A promising area for future research is to assess whether these conveyor belts are more effective
for mitigation policies versus adaptation templates (with mitigation being more normatively ap-
propriate in relation to adaptation), and within different types of adaptation policies (especially,
hard versus soft infrastructures).

To what extent can global diffusion processes penetrate local institutions? National govern-
ments are probably most embedded in the global networks of NGOs and IGOs. Subnational
governance units, especially in developing countries, typically do not have the standing in inter-
governmental organizations, and certainly do not have the resources to attend their meetings.
International NGOs also probably focus their policy efforts at the central authority. Subnational
governments, therefore, receive these global policy templates via the agency of their national gov-
ernments. It is less clear how national governments translate these global templates for subnational
policy action, a critical issue for adaptation studies because adaptation is supposed to be primarily
a local effort.
The global system also provides instrumental incentives for the adoption of global policy tem-
plates. Scholars note the role of the European Union in popularizing climate action, the so-called
EU Effect, by regulating the access of overseas exporters to its markets (118, 119). But international
actors exercise a direct instrumental influence over developing countries via foreign aid. The 1992
UNFCCC had noted developed countries’ obligation to assist developing countries in adapting
to climate change. The Kyoto Protocol established the Adaptation Fund (1) that has committed
$426 million since 2010 for specific adaptation projects. The various conferences of the parties,
the 2009 Copenhagen Accord, and the 2016 Paris Agreement have reaffirmed developed coun-
tries’ commitment to funding climate adaptation in developing countries. In addition to individual
countries, multilateral development banks have pledged billions of dollars for adaptation.
We recognize that there is probably some double counting in these adaptation commitments
(because donors have political incentives to inflate their levels of generosity), international finan-
cial support for adaptation seems sizeable. Yet, some caveats are in order because it is less clear
the extent to which adaptation aid or climate aid is more generally supplanting the development
aid. If the “regular” development aid enhances economic, political, and social resilience of com-
munities (soft infrastructure), and climate funding is crowding out development aid, then the
net effect of climate aid on climate resilience is less clear. This suggests that to carefully assess
the effect of climate aid on adaptation capacities, scholars must adopt the additionality principle:
the effect of climate aid over and above development aid. This can pose an accounting and mea-
surement problem if adaptation aid supports hard infrastructure while development aid focuses
on soft infrastructure (or vice versa). This brings us back to the question we raised previously:
How should both scholars and practitioners measure the “stock” of soft infrastructure or assess
how it has enhanced adaptation capacities? With these metrics, the task of adding or subtracting
the two types of infrastructure will become easier. We suggest that this is an important area for
future research.
Another important area of enquiry is whether international aid enhances or crowds out local
resource mobilization efforts via, for example, taxation: After all, if a government can secure
resources from abroad, why should it spend its political capital on the unpleasant task of taxing
its citizens? This is a subject of the ongoing debate on the relationship between foreign aid
and development more generally (120–122). Scholars also debate whether foreign aid undermines
good governance by insulating government from public pressure and whether it fosters corruption
(123, 124). These debates have also resonated in the climate policy domain. Murtinho et al. (125)
examine whether foreign funding crowds out or crowds in local adaptation efforts in the context
of autonomous Water User Associations in the Andean communities in Colombia. They report
mixed findings: When communities solicit external support, it crowds in local efforts, but when
external support is unsolicited, it crowds out local efforts.
Tompkins (126) reports a different finding in the context of the Cayman Islands. She notes that
Cayman Administrators have had little prior experience with tackling large-scale weather-related
disruptions. Along with physical resilience, they appreciate the need to build up institutional

resilience. These administrators worked on this issue diligently after experiencing Hurricane
Gilbert in 1988. Instead of writing it off as a low-probability event, Cayman administrators began
to invest in institutional resilience. Tompkins attributed much of this institutional change to
external encouragement, primarily from the United Kingdom. Specifically, the Cayman Islands
revised its building codes (127) and undertook measures such as increases in waterfront setbacks.
Future research should document the extent to which such changes in building codes have taken
place in hurricane- or typhoon-prone communities in both the developing and developed world.
Additionally, the Cayman Islands annually began producing national-level planning documents,
starting with the National Hurricane Plan in 1989. Organizationally, it created new administrative
structures, namely the Department of Environment, and sought to actively involve the Ministries of
Tourism, Environment, Development, and Commerce in its planning process (although limited to
the Cayman Islands’ National Hurricane Committee). Tomkins attributes many of these changes
to international support, an important factor given that international support often is viewed as
imposing international templates that ignore local contextual issues.
5. CONCLUSION
Politics is about who gets what, when and how (29). Political scientists note that policy adoption
depends not necessarily on its aggregate benefits and costs (the so-called Kaldor-Hicks criterion),
but also on how these benefits and costs are distributed across different actors, sectors, or industries
(128, 129). Consequently, policies that impose concentrated costs on few and in the short run,
motivate policy losers to organize in opposition to the policy. In contrast, when policies create
benefits for many, and these benefits materialize in the long run, the beneficiaries do not have
similar incentives to organize in support of the policy. Although this characterization holds for
climate mitigation, it might usefully inform the discussions on adaptation as well.
We suggest that climate change adaptation is shaped by a host of factors, including institu-
tional capacities, political dynamics, interest group mobilization, bureaucratic politics, and donor
preferences. Governance units face resource constraints in their adaptation planning. Moreover,
adaptation projects focused on one climate stressor may crowd out investment in other adaptation
priorities. Actors also have different levels of risk perception and vulnerability assessment. We
suggest that the type and levels of adaptation investment and the timescale within which they
occur, should be viewed as a political choice that actors make in a given economic and institu-
tional context. Consequently, it should not be assumed that adaptation policies will be targeted
to improve the resilience of the most vulnerable (or valuable) areas, populations, and activities,
or that adaptation policies will not create negative spillovers for other policy domains, actors, or
geographies. In reality, adaptation failure will occur alongside adaptation success (130).
Governance units cannot adapt to every conceivable climate risk, certainly not at any reasonable
cost (apart from the problems of their bounded rationality). Adaptation, therefore, has financial
and political limits. For example, adaptation might require farmers to find new plots of land and
herders to find new pastures. But migration-based adaptation poses important policy challenges.
For one, there is a finite supply of agricultural land and pastures. Second, migration creates
tremendous political and social disruptions, especially in host regions, as the ongoing backlash
against migration in various parts of the world suggests. Consequently, limits to specific approaches
to climate adaptation ought to be recognized. This should hopefully enhance our motivations to
move quickly on climate change mitigation before climate disruption reaches unmanageable levels
that even far-reaching adaptation policies cannot address.
Scholars seeking to create inventories of adaptation projects or assess the readiness of a gover-
nance unit to climate threats face an unusual problem. Given the highly partisan nature of climate

politics in the United States, an attempt to identify policies with the adaptation label can turn up
false negatives. This is because governance units might be willing to undertake adaption (say via
disaster management) but not willing to proclaim publicly that they are doing so. On the basis
of a survey of 200 local governments in the United States, Romsdahl et al. (131) found that even
in conservative “red” states, public officials recognize the disruption caused by climate-induced
stressors such as heat waves, irregular precipitation, droughts, and floods. In response, they are
investing in adaptation but avoiding the climate label for them. Such below-the-radar stealth
adaptation efforts are probably not picked up in national assessment plans or reports. The lesson
is that a low policy silence of climate adaptation in “official” documents or statements should not
be equated with policy inaction or neglect.
This review also speaks to the broader debate on whether climate adaptation should be main-
streamed; for example, should policies aimed at, for example, economic development explicitly
address climate adaptation issues (132)? The core assumption is that economic development en-
hances the soft infrastructure for improving climate resilience. However, claims about the climate-
development nexus need careful scrutiny. Adger et al. (133, p. 193) note that climate change puts the
spotlights on competing objectives often subsumed under sustainable development: “Populations
‘at risk’ from climate change impacts range from owners of second-home beach-front properties
in Europe and north America to resource-dependent farmers and labourers in Africa and Asia—
building adaptive capacity necessarily requires consideration of rights to development and security
rather than just avoidance of pertinent risks.”
The role of policy elites and stakeholders in shaping adaptation policies also needs careful
examination. As the perceptions about the threat posed by climate change intensify, there will be
policy temptation to impose top-down adaptation measures rooted in either technical rationality
or economic rationality without adequate local consultation and appreciation of local needs. This
will be counterproductive because developing the soft adaptation infrastructure is a crucial pillar
of climate proofing efforts. At a minimum, the processes of policy formulation should be inclusive;
research shows that individuals oppose policies that they perceive to be procedurally unjust (134).
Adaptation advocates must avoid perception that adaptation is an elite project, a perception about
environmentalism that some population groups already hold (135–137). The rise of populism
across the world, the backlash against the European Union, and the demand for rolling back trade
agreements should serve as cautionary tales in this regard.
This is not to say that the community engagement, stakeholder consultation, or collaborative
processes are always the best mechanisms for policy formulation and implementation. They are
not. For one, collaborative processes can mask considerable power differences among stakeholders
(138); the notion of community itself poses conceptual problems (139). What is critical is that
scholars and practitioners remain sensitive to the issue of power imbalances and appreciate the
incentives for the powerful to “capture” the adaptation projects (140).
Adaptation involves trade-offs, and some policies will probably create negative spillovers across
individuals, sectors, geographies, and time horizons. Zero negative spillover policies probably
cannot be designed. Adaptation may also clash with other societal objectives: It will be a folly
to assume that it is a magic bullet that can improve climate resilience, without compromising
societies’ ability to pursue other goals such as economic growth, inclusion, and poverty reduction.
Adaptation must, therefore, involve critical scrutiny, and not be treated as a holy cow. In the
long run, climate adaptation will be effective, will secure a social buy-in, and will shape social and
individual conducts in desired ways, if it is viewed as legitimate, fair, and effective. Many scholars
call for climate proofing of development policies (141); we suggest serious attention to political
proofing of climate adaptation.

Finally, climate change is portrayed as a global “bad” with negative consequences for people
and their communities. Much of the literature on adaptation focuses on assessing climate risk and
reducing the vulnerability of communities that face this risk. However, scholars also note that
climate change can create economic opportunities (90), and adaptation policies must address this
part of the climate puzzle as well. The Artic presents an important case to study the challenges
posed by climate change (142) along with the new economic opportunities it offers. At a political
level, the melting of the Arctic is even creating competing claims of sovereignty, including a
movement for autonomy in Greenland (143). As world powers compete to assert their claims over
the Arctic, they are investing in hardware such as a new icebreaker fleet to secure benefits from
the thawing of the Artic. But beyond the frontier politics of the Arctic, climate change adaptation
can create new economic opportunities in new and interesting ways. Biesbroek et al. (58) note
that the Netherlands’s NAS focuses on the possibility to leverage Dutch technical expertise on
water and coastal engineering as an important “product” for exports. The NAS of several northern
European countries note the opportunities to invest in new infrastructure to take advantage of a
longer growing season and higher levels of agricultural productivity.
To conclude, climate adaptation is supposed to pose fewer policy challenges in relation to
climate mitigation, given its local benefits. However, governance units reveal remarkable variations
in their response to the adaptation challenge. Some of their projects may not cohere with the typical
prescriptions of scientific and economic rationality. However, there is a logic to these variations,
which is better understood by bringing politics into the study of climate adaptation.
SUMMARY POINTS
1. Climate action has two pillars: mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation faces collective
action issues because its costs are concentrated on specific locations/actors but benefits
are global and nonexcludable. Adaptation, in contrast, creates local benefits and therefore
should face fewer collective action issues.
2. Adaptation, however, faces its own set of policy challenges. There is no template for
optimum adaptation. Governance units adopt different adaptation policies because they
vary in (a) their perceptions of climate risks, (b) policy priorities, (c) resources availability,
and (d ) institutional competence and organizational politics.
3. Soft adaptation faces political problems because policy makers have electoral incentives to
favor hard, visible adaptation over soft adaptation. It also faces implementation challenges
because the concept of soft adaptation is open ended, and its salient dimensions may be
in conflict with one another.
4. Adaptation has a scale mismatch problem: It is often implemented at the local level
but much of the planning and resource availability is concentrated at the national level.
The availability of climate funds, often from international donors, may incentivize local
governance units to repackage disaster management as adaptation.
5. Adaptation policies might lead some actors to believe that climate issues have been ad-
dressed, and they may even begin to adopt more carbon-intensive approaches, the so-
called rebound effect.
6. Maladapted projects reduce climate vulnerability of a governance unit in the short run.
But they may erode its climate resilience over time, or those of other units, sectors, and
geographies that face spillover effects.

FUTURE ISSUES
1. How should governance units prioritize different climate risks in order to plan their adap-
tation investments? Whose voices and perceptions should count in this risk evaluation
process?
2. Adaptation investments might crowd out other policy priorities. Improved climate re-
silience could compromise societies’ ability to pursue other goals such as economic
growth, inclusion, and poverty reduction. How should such policy trade-offs be assessed?
3. Given much of adaptation in developing countries depends on foreign aid, how might
adaptation policies incorporate lessons of both aid failure and aid success?
4. How should governance units find a balance between investments in mitigation and
adaptation?
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
The authors are not aware of any affiliations, memberships, funding, or financial holdings that
might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.
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EG43_FrontMatter ARI 4 October 2018 14:49
Annual Review of
Environment
and Resources
Contents
Volume 43, 2018
I. Integrative Themes and Emerging Concerns

China’s Environment on a Metacoupled Planet
Jianguo Liu, Andrés Viña, Wu Yang, Shuxin Li,

Weihua Xu, and Hua Zheng p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 1

Recent Progress and Emerging Topics on Weather and Climate
Extremes Since the Fifth Assessment Report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Yang Chen, Wilfran Moufouma-Okia, Valérie Masson-Delmotte,
Panmao Zhai, and Anna Pirani p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p35
Inequality and the Biosphere
Maike Hamann, Kevin Berry, Tomas Chaigneau, Tracie Curry,
Robert Heilmayr, Patrik J.G. Henriksson, Jonas Hentati-Sundberg,
Amir Jina, Emilie Lindkvist, Yolanda Lopez-Maldonado, Emmi Nieminen,
Matı́as Piaggio, Jiangxiao Qiu, Juan C. Rocha, Caroline Schill, Alon Shepon,
Andrew R. Tilman, Inge van den Bijgaart, and Tong Wu p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p61
Religion and Climate Change
Willis Jenkins, Evan Berry, and Luke Beck Kreider p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p85
The Diet, Health, and Environment Trilemma
Michael Clark, Jason Hill, and David Tilman p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 109
II. Earth’s Life Support Systems

1.5°C Hotspots: Climate Hazards, Vulnerabilities, and Impacts
Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Delphine Deryng, Sarah D’haen, William Hare,
Tabea Lissner, Mouhamed Ly, Alexander Nauels, Melinda Noblet,
Peter Pfleiderer, Patrick Pringle, Martin Rokitzki, Fahad Saeed,
Michiel Schaeffer, Olivia Serdeczny, and Adelle Thomas p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 135
Methane and Global Environmental Change
Dave S. Reay, Pete Smith, Torben R. Christensen, Rachael H. James,
and Harry Clark p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 165
The Effects of Tropical Vegetation on Rainfall
D.V. Spracklen, J.C.A. Baker, L. Garcia-Carreras, and J.H. Marsham p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 193
vi
The Terrestrial Carbon Sink

T.F. Keenan and C.A. Williams p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 219
III. Human Use of the Environment and Resources

Mobile Worlds: Choice at the Intersection of Demographic
and Environmental Change
Jon Barnett and W. Neil Adger p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 245
Social-Ecological Systems Insights for Navigating the Dynamics
of the Anthropocene
Belinda Reyers, Carl Folke, Michele-Lee Moore, Reinette Biggs, and Victor Galaz p p p p p 267
IV. Management and Governance of Resources and Environment

Research on Degrowth
Giorgos Kallis, Vasilis Kostakis, Steffen Lange, Barbara Muraca,
Susan Paulson, and Matthias Schmelzer p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 291
The Politics of Climate Change Adaptation
Nives Dolšak and Aseem Prakash p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 317
The Evolution of the UNFCCC
Jonathan Kuyper, Heike Schroeder, and Björn-Ola Linnér p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 343
Sustainability Standards: Interactions Between Private Actors, Civil
Society, and Governments
Eric F. Lambin and Tannis Thorlakson p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 369
India and Climate Change: Evolving Ideas and Increasing Policy
Engagement
Navroz K. Dubash, Radhika Khosla, Ulka Kelkar, and Sharachchandra Lele p p p p p p p p p p 395
Transnational Governance for Mining and the Mineral Lifecycle
Graeme Auld, Michele Betsill, and Stacy D. VanDeveer p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 425
The Economics of 1.5°C Climate Change
Simon Dietz, Alex Bowen, Baran Doda, Ajay Gambhir, and Rachel Warren p p p p p p p p p p 455
V. Methods and Indicators

Mapping Sea-Level Change in Time, Space, and Probability
Benjamin P. Horton, Robert E. Kopp, Andra J. Garner, Carling C. Hay,
Nicole S. Khan, Keven Roy, and Timothy A. Shaw p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 481
Multiple UAVs for Mapping: A Review of Basic Modeling, Simulation,
and Applications
Tarek I. Zohdi p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 523
Contents vii
Scenario Development and Foresight Analysis: Exploring Options to

Inform Choices
Keith Wiebe, Monika Zurek, Steven Lord, Natalia Brzezina,
Gnel Gabrielyan, Jessica Libertini, Adam Loch, Resham Thapa-Parajuli,
Joost Vervoort, and Henk Westhoek p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 545
Indexes
Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 34–43 p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 571

Cumulative Index of Article Titles, Volumes 34–43 p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 577
Errata
An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Environment and Resources articles may
be found at http://www.annualreviews.org/errata/environ
viii Contents

Annurev-Environ-The Politics of Climate ChangeAdaptation

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EG43CH13_Prakash ARI 14 September 2018 15:50

Annual Review of Environment and Resources

The Politics of Climate Change

Nives Dolšak1 and Aseem Prakash2

Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 2018. 43:317–41 Keywords

The Annual Review of Environment and Resources is Abstract

4.2. International Influences on Local Adaptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331

318 Dolšak · Prakash

www.annualreviews.org • Climate Adaptation Politics 319

policy priorities, institutional dynamics, and resources constraints. Consequently, it is conceptually

320 Dolšak · Prakash

Table 1 Climate adaptation policyscape: a political perspective

preferred? Role of international influences in favoring specific policies

2. WHO DEVELOPS ADAPTATION POLICIES?

2.1. Adaptation, Old and New

www.annualreviews.org • Climate Adaptation Politics 321

322 Dolšak · Prakash

www.annualreviews.org • Climate Adaptation Politics 323

2.2. Tension Between National and Local Adaptation

324 Dolšak · Prakash

www.annualreviews.org • Climate Adaptation Politics 325

326 Dolšak · Prakash

3. TYPES OF ADAPTATION POLICIES

3.1. Soft Infrastructure and Adaptation

www.annualreviews.org • Climate Adaptation Politics 327

328 Dolšak · Prakash

Trade-offs among the various

If social capacity is enhnaced by

Civil society is poorly developed

3.2. Critiques of Adaptation

www.annualreviews.org • Climate Adaptation Politics 329

4. WHY SPECIFIC TYPES OF ADAPTATION POLICIES EMERGE

4.1. Policy Visibility and Political Choices

330 Dolšak · Prakash

4.2. International Influences on Local Adaptation

www.annualreviews.org • Climate Adaptation Politics 331

332 Dolšak · Prakash

www.annualreviews.org • Climate Adaptation Politics 333

334 Dolšak · Prakash

www.annualreviews.org • Climate Adaptation Politics 335

336 Dolšak · Prakash

policy assessment. Mitig. Adapt. Strateg. Glob. Change 12:495–524

www.annualreviews.org • Climate Adaptation Politics 337

338 Dolšak · Prakash

services: some economic and institutional considerations. Policy Stud. J. 9:1001–11

www.annualreviews.org • Climate Adaptation Politics 339

in the Middle East and North Africa. Clim. Change 104:599–627

340 Dolšak · Prakash

www.annualreviews.org • Climate Adaptation Politics 341

I. Integrative Themes and Emerging Concerns

Jianguo Liu, Andrés Viña, Wu Yang, Shuxin Li,

Weihua Xu, and Hua Zheng p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 1

II. Earth’s Life Support Systems

The Terrestrial Carbon Sink

III. Human Use of the Environment and Resources

IV. Management and Governance of Resources and Environment

V. Methods and Indicators

Scenario Development and Foresight Analysis: Exploring Options to

Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 34–43 p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 571

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